All posts tagged ‘Memories’

You’ve probably already read a lot of posts like this one today and will no doubt read many more. I haven’t read any yet, as I wanted to collect my thoughts on the sad death of Steve Jobs before reading any others. Like many of us, I was shocked at the news I read when I first woke up this morning — and like many of us again, I read it in a way that would not have been possible five years ago, on a device that Jobs helped to create.

I saw my first Macintosh computer in 1990, at my first proper job. I left school at 18, tired of education, and started in a career that utilised one of my strongest subjects, Maths. I was a trainee accountant. The apprenticeship involved moving around the various departments of a large company, learning more and more about numbers – none of it stuck in my head. The only part of the job I can remember is from when I was in the marketing department. In amongst the regular suits was this one guy, maybe a couple of years older than me. He didn’t wear a suit, or even a tie. He had a beige computer which at first glance seemed like all the others in the office, except for the giant screen, which was in full colour.

His job was to produce all the marketing reports for the directors. He would take all the boring numbers and fact and figures, which meant nothing to me, and turn them into pretty charts and tables. He could even put pictures in the documents and everything. To someone who was used to computers like the BBC Micro or Commodore 64, it was like a kind of magic. It was at this point that I realised I made a bad career choice and subsequently started making plans to go to college the following year and do something more creative with my life.

Michael McQueen gave his father a notebook for Father’s Day one year, along with a list of questions. He wanted his dad to write down “stories and explanations from his life that had never come up in conversation.” But after presenting this gift, he quickly forgot about it—until just over a year later, sorting through his dad’s belongings after he died of an unexpected heart attack. McQueen turned to this notebook often for “guidance, advice, and hope,” finding it to be a link between generations. It was a remarkable gift left to him by his father, and it inspired McQueen to encourage others to do the same.

Memento: My Life in Stories is a sort of journal, with questions arranged in a few categories: My Younger Years, My Family Heritage, What I Value & Believe, What I Have Learned, and My Hopes & Dreams. There’s room to construct a family tree and a personal timeline, and there are some pages of quotations and a few illustrations scattered throughout. But mostly the book is blank pages, each with a question at the top. It’s an attractive book, but the real value comes from what’s written in it. McQueen’s hope is that this book will become a family heirloom, the sort of thing that your kids’ kids will look at and have a better idea of who you were, what you cared about, what you stood for.

I really love the idea. When I’m reminded of my own mortality, whether because of some close call on the road or while paying my life insurance premiums, I think about what I’ll leave behind. Sure, I want to make sure that my family is provided for financially, and it’d be nice to have instructions about what to do with all the stuff so that my heirs don’t have to deal with a bunch of junk they really don’t want to think about. But what I really would like is to be sure that my kids know who I was—that I’ve passed along any wisdom I have and given them the advice that they need to grow up and find their own way in the world. I’ve sometimes wondered: if I knew I had a certain amount of time left, would I pull something like Michael Keaton’s character in the film “My Life”? (Yeah, it’s a sentimental movie that tries really hard to pull your strings, but it does hit home in parts.)

Memento is one way to do this. Of course, it’s not necessary to buy this particular book; any notebook would do, really. But one nice thing about the book McQueen has put together is that the questions are thought-provoking, personal, specific. It’s a little less daunting to be able to turn to a page and say, “Hey, I can fill out this question today,” rather than being faced with a blank notebook and no idea where to start.

Whatever method you choose, consider this the other sort of life insurance: leaving behind your thoughts and memories for your family is going to be a much more valuable treasure than your mint-condition collection of comic books or your closetful of board games.

I was reminiscing with a friend recently about our misspent youth with Radio Controlled cars. We enthused for hours about saving up for a real hobbyist vehicle and then waiting for it to arrive in the post. Then there were the hours of frustration trying to put it together.

But it was all so worth it. We both agreed there was a tremendous sense of achievement in racing something you had essentially built yourself.

I resolved to make sure my kids could have this sort of ownership of whatever hobbies they took to – cars, games or craft. My friend was inspired to write his childhood R/C experience up for prosperity in his Radio Controlled Car blog. Here’s a few things he included from his R/C childhood:

My wait continued until several years worth of pocket money accumulated and I was able to satisfy my boyhood R/C fantasies with the object of my dreams. A full-in-the-flesh Tamiya Hornet. Oh boy. And did I love that car. I loved everything about it. The big proper springy spring sock absorbers. The meaty 540 motor. The dune buggy styling. The bendy front and side rail bumpers. And before I got a chance to get too used to the car, I got the customizing bug.

It would go something like this. I’d see a friends car, like Mark from the new estate’s Tamiya Fox with the ‘ooooh so shiny’ gold wheels. And I’d want them. So that would be the next 3 Saturdays gone, as I would trawl round Leamington Spa’s toy and model emporiums in search of new wheels. But having only birthday and pocket money, I would often have to resign myself to buying a pair at a time.

Thinking back, it was so much fun tweaking a very basic car, and I can almost taste the boyish agony of saving every 50p until I could afford a new Technigold motor. Soon after that it was body-shells: polycarbonate moldings that made the car look like a touring car. I initially bought a universal Le Mans style body which i had to cut down to let the wheels turn. Then I upgraded to a BMW 3 series with wide arches. Happy times.

Whether you had a childhood around R/C cars, computers, board games or other pursuits, I think it’s a great think to share this with our kids.

A memory is defined as the mental ability to store, retain and recall information. In this age of technology however, there have been great advances in the tools that can be used to store these memories. No longer is it just a faded photograph or a faint reminder in the back of your head of something that you just can’t place. Now we have the inherent ability to record nearly every moment of not only our own lives, but of our children’s lives as well.